Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning the new economics of subslavery

Someone wrote:

> I've come *very close* to buying a G4 a number of times because
> of the wealth of great music software that only runs on the Mac.
> But each time I consider it, I look at the *price tags* on all
> that great software, shake my head, remember my great
> programming skill and the wealth of *free open-source* music and
> system software out there, such as CSound, sfront, and Linux,
> and the fact that my other hobby, computational finance,
> essentially is constrained to Windows because my data service
> runs there.

Hi. This isn't really directed at you in particular, but
at EVERYONE, but I'm just writing you because I am truly
fascinated by this attitude. It keeps coming up in the
news and on thisn list. I am writing in the hopes that you
and others who agree with you can share with me details of
your beliefs because I truly find myself confounded by
them.

Do you get paid for your job? Do you expect to be paid?
Will you come over to my house and paint my barn for free?

Do you honestly believe that it does not take significant
amounts of time and money to develop software? If those
who find the software useful and valuable are not willing
to pay for it, how will it be developed? The open source
movement is fine for people who have stipends, are on
welfare, have university jobs, or have been left money by
their parents, and I applaud any of them who want to spend
their life making things and giving them away for free.
But for the rest of us, how will we eat if no one is
willing to pay for the work we do for them?

OK, I am not one to flame but this really rankled me and
I believe a flame is necessary here because of the rank
audacity of the ideas being put forth. And I apologize for
the fact that I am doing this. But somebody has to say
something becasue your views are far from unique. They are
becoming the new paradigm of the selfish and destructive
baby boomer generation: Gimmee gimmee gimmeee! Me me me!!
All for me!! All for me!!

Although I myself write music software and design music
hardware, if anyone asks me about writing software or
doing engineering in general, I tell them it's not a good
career choice, and it is particularly not a good choice to
work in the music industry, and it is definitely not worth
their time working on adding tuning features to
synthesizers. There's 450 people on this list and a number
of them work in acoustic instruments. Of those who do use
computers artistically, there are several platforms
represented. And of that incredibly small customer base to
begin with, although most of them appear to have computers
that are at least capable of internet access, few believe
that they should have to support the development of
anything by doing say, paying for the software that is
helping them achieve their artistic goals.

Music software and hardware development is kind of a
stupid thing to waste one's time on if you need to choose
something to make a living on. As long as this continues
to be true, development on new tools and the promotion of
new musics will be much slower than it should be. There is
actually a reason why so many of the audio software houses
have to put dongles and copy protection schemes on their
software. They would go out of business otherwise since it
is a very small market.

You say that you yourself are familiar with software
development. Is there anything stopping you from writing
all this great software you want for free yourself?
Perhaps after you get it working you can come to my house
and set it up for me so that I can have it too. Am I
missing something in interpreting this as the economic
model you appear to embrace and expect?

Back in the old days they had people who were slaves. They
still have these people in many parts of the world,
including the US and its territories.

The master owned the slave and didn't pay him money for
his work. But the slave did recieve room and board --
food, since the master had an investment in the slaves.
They were valuable to him! They provided him with help
that made him financially successful and he appreciated
that!

Ah for the life of a slave!

Or a barn animal. They have it good. My goats give
me milk. In return I attend to their needs and give
them sweet feed. I don't just go out there and take from
them without giving something in return.

My soil gives my plants in the garden which I pick and
eat. In the past, foolish farmers did this without
repaying the soil. The result -- sterility, dead soil,
poor crops, blight and pestilence.

The chickens like living here. They run up to me
and follow me around. Yes, I steal and eat their
egg children, but I give them chicken food and
clean out their coop and chase away dogs. They
think it's a fair trade.

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure these things
out. This is common sense knowledge that is available to
any poor dumb peasant. But in our modern society we have
an overwhelming vast majority of people running around
claiming that raping and pillaging is the best model for
sustainable growth!

Nowadays we can not find such a life of luxury as a slave
or livestock. Everyone feels they have a moral right to
steal the labor of others without any compensation, or
complain loudly that they are not given things for free.
How selfish and unrealistic everyone has become. People
trade in stocks like chickens with their heads cut off and
yet they have absolutely no clue whatsoever about basic
economics. Such as that companies must produce some sort
of revenue generating product to stay in business.

"Woe to him that builds his house by unrighteousness, and
his chambers by wrong; that uses his neighbor's service
without wages, and gives him not for his work." - Jeremiah
22:13

"The laborer is worthy of his hire." - Luke 10:7

"Who goes a warfare any time at his own charges? who
plants a vineyard, and eats not the fruit thereof? or who
feeds a flock, and eats not of the milk of the flock?" - 1
Corinthians 9:7

"For the scripture says, you shall not muzzle the ox that
treads out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his
reward." - 1 Timothy 5:18

"The husbandman that labors must be first partaker of the
fruits." - 2 Timothy 2:6

Any one agree with me or am I the only one that sees it
this way?

Let me be clear here: Taking without giving does not lead
to growth and better things, it leads to sterility and
death.

I can not begin to express the heartwrenching
disappointment I feel when I realize that so many
supposedly educated people who have so much potential and
so much to offer have bought into the bizarre and
destructive culture of materialism that teaches that
people should take what they want and look out for number
one and have no concern whatsoever for the people they are
stealing from.

"Wanting to be wise, they became as fools."

- Jeff

PS - I want to commend three people that I know of who are
doing a wonderful job of assisting and developing the
cause of microtonality rather than expecting to be given
free stuff:

Jonathan and Elizabeth Glasier

for their financial and emotional
patronage of Ivor Darreg and others.
They are not rich but they believe
in using what they have to support
work they believe in.

Gary Morrison

for his tremendous financial and time
investment in the Xenharmonic Alliance.

Brian McLaren

for not backing down from the truth
and for putting his time, finances,
intellectual and emotional energy
full force into what he believes in.

🔗graham@microtonal.co.uk

🔗J Scott <xjscott@earthlink.net>

🔗daeron@bellsouth.net

🔗Ed Borasky <znmeb@aracnet.com>

--- In tuning@y..., "J Scott" <xjscott@e...> wrote:
> Someone wrote:
That someone would be me -- M. Edward (Ed) Borasky.

> > I've come *very close* to buying a G4 a number of times because
> > of the wealth of great music software that only runs on the Mac.
> > But each time I consider it, I look at the *price tags* on all
> > that great software, shake my head, remember my great
> > programming skill and the wealth of *free open-source* music and
> > system software out there, such as CSound, sfront, and Linux,
> > and the fact that my other hobby, computational finance,
> > essentially is constrained to Windows because my data service
> > runs there.
>
> Hi. This isn't really directed at you in particular, but
> at EVERYONE, but I'm just writing you because I am truly
> fascinated by this attitude.
What attitude is that? The *fact* that my budget, like everyone
else's, is *finite*?

> It keeps coming up in the
> news and on thisn list. I am writing in the hopes that you
> and others who agree with you can share with me details of
> your beliefs because I truly find myself confounded by
> them.
>
> Do you get paid for your job?
Yes. And my job does not involve either of my principal hobbies,
computational finance or computer music. It does have a number of
things in common with them, most notably extensive use of numerical
calculations. There are other things I can and have done with this
particular skill in the past, some for free and some for money.

> Do you expect to be paid?
Yes, but that is simply a result of the fact that what I do provides
value to my employer. If he could find someone who does what I do for
less money, I fully recognize that I am likely to be cut loose with
little warning. It is part of my job to continue to grow technically
and personally so that I am worth what they pay me.

> Will you come over to my house and paint my barn for free?
I'm not a painter. I wouldn't even pretend to charge money for
painting a barn, nor would I do a particularly good job of it. I'm a
mathematician, and there are quite a few circumstances under which I
would do math for free.

> Do you honestly believe that it does not take significant
> amounts of time and money to develop software?
Hell, no! I do this for a living, remember. That's *exactly* been my
point to the people who've been complaining about CSound ... that it
costs money to do that.

> If those
> who find the software useful and valuable are not willing
> to pay for it, how will it be developed? The open source
> movement is fine for people who have stipends, are on
> welfare, have university jobs, or have been left money by
> their parents, and I applaud any of them who want to spend
> their life making things and giving them away for free.
Why do you suppose all these people do this? Could it possibly be
because they love it, and that is more important than money? Could it
be because they hate Microsoft? :-) I can't speak for all of them,
but those that I have met on mailing lists do this because they love
it, and because they are using the tools they make and are willing to
share them with others. All they ask in return is a willingness to
contribute whatever one can.

Something is worth *exactly* what a customer is willing to pay for
it -- no more, no less. I just bought Red Hat Linux 7.1 Deluxe
Workstation Edition for $80US. Much of the software on the seven CDs
is free software I could have downloaded off the Internet. But I paid
for the convenience of not having to download 4.5 gigabytes at 21.6
Kbits per second, and for 60 days of support.

What is on those seven CDs is a modern operating system with *two*
GUIs, an "office" package similar in functionality to Microsoft
Office, *two* scientific application packages comparable in
functionality to MatLab, a world-class statistical package called R
and some music and sound software I haven't had time to explore as
yet.

I also own Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional ($300US), Microsoft
Office 2000 ($250), Adobe Acrobat ($250), a stock and commodity
database and a few other smaller packages, mostly music related.

> But for the rest of us, how will we eat if no one is
> willing to pay for the work we do for them?
You need to understand that you will not always be paid what *you*
think you are worth, but what your *employer* or *customer* thinks
you are worth. Given that fact, how you will eat is strictly up to
you.

> OK, I am not one to flame but this really rankled me and
> I believe a flame is necessary here because of the rank
> audacity of the ideas being put forth. And I apologize for
> the fact that I am doing this. But somebody has to say
> something becasue your views are far from unique. They are
> becoming the new paradigm of the selfish and destructive
> baby boomer generation: Gimmee gimmee gimmeee! Me me me!!
> All for me!! All for me!!
I am actually not officially a baby boomer ... I was born *during*
WWII, not after it. I do not *expect* free software, but I *use* it,
and I *contribute* to its development within the limits of available
time. Read the GNU Public License sometime.

> Although I myself write music software and design music
> hardware, if anyone asks me about writing software or
> doing engineering in general, I tell them it's not a good
> career choice, and it is particularly not a good choice to
> work in the music industry, and it is definitely not worth
> their time working on adding tuning features to
> synthesizers.
You've just made a marketing decision for yourself ... I applaud that
fact, but you don't speak for everyone. I think that's bad advice
you're giving people for a variety of reasons.

> There's 450 people on this list and a number
> of them work in acoustic instruments. Of those who do use
> computers artistically, there are several platforms
> represented. And of that incredibly small customer base to
> begin with, although most of them appear to have computers
> that are at least capable of internet access, few believe
> that they should have to support the development of
> anything by doing say, paying for the software that is
> helping them achieve their artistic goals.
Well, I paid for CDP ... I think it's well worth what I paid for it,
too. I paid for CoolEdit 2000 -- same thing. jSYN -- ditto. Those are
three wheels I don't have any interest in re-inventing. And how can
you know what "few" or "many" believe? I can only tell you what *I*
believe, as I am doing.

> Music software and hardware development is kind of a
> stupid thing to waste one's time on if you need to choose
> something to make a living on.
If you truly love it and are truly good at it, it is not a waste of
time. Can I compete with Yamaha or Roland? Of course not! This is a
hobby for me. I do love it and I am good at it and I don't consider
it a waste of time. If tomorrow my employer decided he didn't need me
any more, I would certainly consider turning it from a hobby to a job
or a business. But I don't expect to get paid if I don't produce
something of value.

> As long as this continues
> to be true, development on new tools and the promotion of
> new musics will be much slower than it should be.
I contend just the opposite: it is free software and open source that
makes new musics possible! It is the Internet that is responsible for
bringing microtonalists all over the world together in this group.
Yahoo lets us talk to each other absolutely free in exchange for
subjecting us to advertising that we are free to ignore. It's the
same deal as network TV -- I get to see "Law and Order" and I don't
have to buy a blooming thing, nor do I have to feel guilty if I don't
happen to need what they're selling.

> There is
> actually a reason why so many of the audio software houses
> have to put dongles and copy protection schemes on their
> software. They would go out of business otherwise since it
> is a very small market.
>
> You say that you yourself are familiar with software
> development. Is there anything stopping you from writing
> all this great software you want for free yourself?
I write what I need to write, buy what I need to buy and use what I
can use that is free.

> Perhaps after you get it working you can come to my house
> and set it up for me so that I can have it too.
A few posts back, I mentioned that I am going to integrate a Linux
system for sound and that I *might* post some of my code on my web
site. I'll even post instructions for how to install it, and help you
out with it if it gives you any grief. That assumes that it is
something that would be of use to you, though. If I came up with
something that enough people thought was worth paying for, I might
actually sell it, but that's unlikely given the nature of what I'm
doing.

My music combines several ideas: algorithmic composition,
microtonality, musique concrete and found music. It's my unique
thing, and the software I write is mostly "glue logic" making these
things happen. Unless you happen to be doing exactly the same things
as I'm doing, it might be more trouble to get it running than it
would be worth.

For example, one of the projects I'm working on is turning stock
market price and volume series into music. It's similar in principle
to Charles Dodge's "Earth's Magnetic Field", although I'm not using
the obvious translation of stock price to pitch, but instead
computing the parameters of the stochastic process that generates the
prices and generating musical materials from an emulation of that
process.

The code that computes the parameters uses the above-mentioned
statistical package R. I have that part running already; it took
about four hours to piece it together, which is a testimony to how
easy R is to work with. The code that generates the actual music is
going to look a lot like Xenakis' "gendy" from "Formalized Music",
once I figure out what he's doing. But it will be implemented in the
GPL "sfront" package, with a fair amount of Perl "glue logic" simply
because I can program faster in Perl than other languages. I'm using
three GPL tools: R, sfront and Perl. All three will run on either
Windows or Linux (and probably Macintosh as well, though I don't own
one so I have no idea :-).

> Am I
> missing something in interpreting this as the economic
> model you appear to embrace and expect?
Well, you're making a lot of assumptions about the way I and others
think and feel. I believe in free software and open source in the
sense of the GNU Public License. I have a full-time job, and though
my employer is perfectly willing to spend thousands of dollars buying
me a statistical package, I am phasing over to the free GPL package
R, which is as good as, and in some cases better than, the commercial
ones. My economic model is that the *customer* determines the worth
of my creations.

> Back in the old days they had people who were slaves. They
> still have these people in many parts of the world,
> including the US and its territories.

OK ... drop the political propaganda! If you wanna be a communist, go
to another mailing list! "You are the weakest link -- goodbye!" :-)
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, Chief Scientist, Borasky Research

http://www.borasky-research.net http://www.aracnet.com/~znmeb
mailto:znmeb@borasky-research.com mailto:znmeb@aracnet.com

If there's nothing to astrology, how come so many famous men were
born on holidays?

🔗Seth Austen <klezmusic@earthlink.net>

on 4/29/01 5:02 PM, tuning@yahoogroups.com at tuning@yahoogroups.com wrote:

> From: "J Scott" <xjscott@earthlink.net>
> Subject: the new economics of subslavery

>
> Hi. This isn't really directed at you in particular, but
> at EVERYONE,

Hi, I'm one of the "someones". As a full time musician, composer, performer,
private music teacher (and part time website designer and Mac
troubleshooting to make ends meet), I would agree with you that our
livelyhoods as artists and musicians are just as jeopardized by the current
state of affairs (Napster, etc) that software designers such as yourself
face today in the "new economy" that our politicians love to expound upon.
We certainly live in a culture of many wanting or expecting something for
nothing, and thus it is often a hard road for creative people in any field.

As an example, lots of people are quite willing to download free mp3s or
sound samples from my and other musicians' websites, and only a small
percentage of those visitors buy CDs. Similarly, lots of software is
available as a "light" version for free download, and only a small
percentage of customers will buy the full version. This is a cost of doing
business, that can be considered advertising.

> Do you honestly believe that it does not take significant
> amounts of time and money to develop software? If those
> who find the software useful and valuable are not willing
> to pay for it, how will it be developed? The open source
> movement is fine for people who have stipends, are on
> welfare, have university jobs, or have been left money by
> their parents, and I applaud any of them who want to spend
> their life making things and giving them away for free.
> But for the rest of us, how will we eat if no one is
> willing to pay for the work we do for them?

I greatly appreciate the existence of people (many with full time jobs and
families) who freely give their knowledge as open source programmers, or for
that matter, the people here on the tuning list who offer help to newbies.
I, for one, have been a grateful recipient of their high level of
scholarship. I am happy to buy and pay for all software and upgrades of
software that I use (and I use a lot), and am also quite happy to find the
occasional freeware online that does a needed job as well. In the same way,
I spend an inordinate percentage of my musical income buying books, CDs and
other learning tools (many independently produced) that will help in my
greater understanding of JI and many other tools available to me as a
composer. Now and then, I download freeware that would help in this effort
as well. I am also very grateful to those who post on this list freely, as
there are many things that have I have read in said purchased books (Partch,
for one) that become much more clear to me from people posting their ideas
without charge. Perhaps I will be able to offer something back to someone
else in the same spirit of giving in the future.

> Back in the old days they had people who were slaves. They
> still have these people in many parts of the world,
> including the US and its territories.
>
> The master owned the slave and didn't pay him money for
> his work. But the slave did recieve room and board --
> food, since the master had an investment in the slaves.
> They were valuable to him! They provided him with help
> that made him financially successful and he appreciated
> that!
>
> Ah for the life of a slave!

Here is where I have to disagree! Slaveowners, as is evident by their
inhumane behavior, did not exhibit appreciation as would befit someone who
made them successful. They rewarded their slaves with substandard living
conditions, separation of families, rape, torture and death once a slave
ceased to "produce" enough to be of "value". The corporate conglomerate we
live within often tends to behave in much the same way towards members of
the poor and working classes, particularly in third world countries, but
also in the USA, when they think no one is watching. They reward workers
with layoffs, poverty wages, cutting back of benefits, etc. The analogy of
slavery compared to freeware downloads doesn't really make it for me, I
actually find it highly offensive.

Anyway, enough of this OT reply from me, I wish to get back to music and
tuning...

Peace,

Seth

--
Seth Austen

http://www.sethausten.com
emails: seth@sethausten.com
klezmusic@earthlink.net

"I believe in Spinoza's God, who revealed himself in the harmony of all
being, not in the God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of
men." --Albert Einstein when asked by a New York rabbi, "Do you believe in
God?"

the new economics of subslavery

🔗J Scott <xjscott@earthlink.net>

🔗graham@microtonal.co.uk

🔗J Scott <xjscott@earthlink.net>

🔗daeron@bellsouth.net

🔗Ed Borasky <znmeb@aracnet.com>

🔗Seth Austen <klezmusic@earthlink.net>

🔗Gary Morrison <MR88CET@TEXAS.NET>